


like my heart is going to burst

by plinys



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Star Trek Beyond Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 05:29:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7562224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> "That almost calls for a celebration.”</i>
</p><p>  <i>“Should I alert the crew,” Leonard asks sarcastically.</i></p><p>  <i>“Don’t you dare.” </i><br/> </p><p>OR: Jim spends eight birthdays drunk enough to numb the pain with Leonard by his side to pick up the pieces. And one sober.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like my heart is going to burst

**Author's Note:**

> THIS FIC CONTAINS STAR TREK BEYOND SPOILERS.
> 
> Inspired by a certain scene that rework the McKirk feels in me that had been hiding for what feels like far too long. When was the last time I wrote Star Trek fic you ask? Back in good old 2010 on a very abandoned LJ, so I hope this is semi-in character.

1

The first time it happens he doesn’t know what to expect.

Jim is drunk and leaning against his doorway, not too different from any other night.

The jacket of his cadet uniform hangs open unbuttoned, the white undershirt too tight sticking to his skin, almost unnaturally so. It takes Leonard a second to realize that Jim’s shirt is actually wet, but when he does, he snorts.

“What girl did you piss off this time?”

“How’d you know-”

“I know you,” he insists, “That and somebody threw a drink on you.”

Jim shrugs. A haphazard movement that in his present state that has him stumbling, before he grabs the door frame to hold himself up once more.

“Alright, get over here, you’re sleeping this off.”

“Bones,” Jim says in a damn near whine, as if they haven’t done this plenty of times before.

He has an exam in the morning. One that he had been planning on staying up all night studying for. Though he pushes the books off of his bed, in order to offer Jim a place to sleep it off, without a second thought.

“I may throw up on you,” Jim says, his words are slurred, but he flashes Leonard a grin underneath it all. Teasing even now, as Leonard crouches down to help tug Jim’s boots off. The clothes are a lost cause, but he draws the line at shoes in his bed.

When he says “Smartass,” it’s with the barest hint of fondness in his voice, right before he climbs into the other side of the bed.

The Academy twins aren’t really made for two people, let alone two grown men, but they make it work, just as they’ve made it work plenty of times before. Jim’s elbows digging into his side, the heavy smell of cheap whiskey lingering in the air - he swears for a second, that he hears something, half mumbled, almost like _happy birthday_ , but he falls asleep before ever getting around to asking what Jim meant to say.

 

 

2

Of all the people Leonard expects to standing outside of his dorm room, Winona Kirk is not one of them.

His first thought, foolishly is that she looks like Jim.

This much should be obvious, she is his mother after all. But it’s there in the way she holds herself, leaning against the wall in a manner not quite casual, not quite official business. Her blonde hair pulled back from her face tight bun, her eyes bright blue and staring into him with a familiar scrutinizing manner.

“Doctor McCoy?” She only seems to hesitate here, as if wondering that she might have the wrong person.

He confirms her suspicions with a quick nod, “Admiral Kirk.”

“I thought we could have lunch,” it’s not a question, but a statement. Not that Leonard would ever turn down an officer of lunch from a member of Starfleet high command, no one would be foolish enough to do so. Even if she wasn’t Jim’s mother.

The restaurant she picks for them is a familiar one. Close enough to the Academy that it’s always busy with Cadets, even when most have gone home for the holidays. The conversation is pleasant small talk - the weather, San Francisco, the merits of deep dish vs thin crust pizza - all carefully avoiding the elephant in the room, until it becomes unavoidable.

“You’re Jimmy’s friend, aren’t you, Doctor McCoy?”

“I am.”

“Will you do me a favor?”

“Depends on what that favor is, ma’am,” he replies, the _no offense meant_ going unspoken.

Winona seems kind enough to accept that. Though she hesitates to speak, moves the straw in her drink around twice, before she finally does voice her concerns.

“Jimmy’s birthday is in a week, just after New Year’s, I’m sure you know.”

Leonard nods.

He’d looked it up after last year, when they’d gone out for proper shots for his own birthday just a few weeks later and Jim had done his best to pointedly avoid the subject of his. It hadn’t taken much digging, everyone knows the story of the USS Kelvin, it was just a matter of finding the date.

“Look after him for me,” Winona asks, meeting his eyes as she does so, sincere concern far too clear. “He always gets a bit reckless around that time, more than usual. I tried to get him to talk to someone, to see one of the Academy’s specialists, but you know how Jimmy gets. He’s stubborn, in the best of ways, gets it from his father, but sometimes… I worry. It’s a mother’s job to worry, any parent’s really. You must understand.”

He thinks of Joanna, who had smiled at him in their last call showing off her missing front tooth. Joanna, who would be turning eight in just a few months. Joanna, who made him promise to call on New Year’s, despite Jocelyn’s instance that he really didn’t need to.

“I understand.”

 

 

3

He comms Jim first thing in the morning, promising a bottle of the best tequila San Francisco had to offer, and a six pack for when that got boring, if he’d promised to confine the _celebrations_ to Leonard’s room, and not the whole of the Academy.

After the incident at Christmas with fountain over in east campus, it was a case of better safe than sorry.

They’re two hours into the night when Jim brings it up. He’s sitting on Leonard’s desk, his bottle hanging loose between his fingers, that galaxy’s away look in his eyes.

“Today’s my birthday,” Jim starts, speaking too quickly for Leonard to interrupt. “I mean, it’s _Kelvin_ Day. That’s what they call it in our textbooks, right? The day dear old dad bit the dust in one blaze of glory, saving his crew, and I-” here he takes a swig from the bottle, “-And I, what have I ever done. Another year older and I’m not even sure what I’m doing with myself. I’m here at the Academy following in his footsteps, but that’s all I’ll ever be. George Kirk’s son, a living legacy.”

“You’re more than that,” Leonard cuts him off.

Stopping Jim’s self-deprecating rant in its tracks.

Jim jerks his head up as he does so. Meeting Leonard’s eyes with a look that’s not as long gone as they had seemed moments before. Instead his bright blue eyes hold startling clarity.

He barely even notices Jim slipping off the edge of the desk, standing now, “What’d you say?”

“You’re James T. Kirk,” Leonard continues, “You’re smarter than you give yourself credit it. Genius level from what I hear,” this earns him a snort from Jim. “You’re a survivor. Nearly lethal in a bar fight, and the only person I know who can down twelve shots in an hour and still stand on two feet.  Sure, you’re more foolish than I’d like. Allergic to everything under the sun, and the only person I know crazy enough to consider going back for seconds on the Kobashi Maru. You’re a goddamn mess from time to time, but Jim you’re my mess and-”

This time it’s Jim who cuts him off.

The mouth meeting his isn’t a kind one, it’s a dangerous and reckless kiss. More fight than strictly necessary. The kiss catches him off guard.

Parts of him, the traitorous ones that have been wanting this ever since the first night, a flush and slightly tipsy Jim stripped in front of him before asking to use the shower, gives into the kiss far too easily, opening his mouth like an offering.

Before the rational part of him catches up.

The part that knows they’re both a little drunk and in need of a distraction. The part that knows Jim’s mourning more than he’s celebrating. The part that knows nothing good ever comes from relationships built on drunken first kisses.

He pulls back, even though it makes something in his chest a bit tight.

“You’re drunk, Jim.”

Jim doesn’t even bother denying it. Just nods his head, before going back to take another drink out of his abandoned bottle.

When he speaks again, it’s as if the kiss had never happened. “Well, go on then, aren’t you going to keep telling me how great I am,” Jim asks, a smug grin plastered on his face.

It almost looks fake, but Leonard’s too afraid to push it again.

So he adopts an easy teasing tone, “What and let your head get any bigger?”

 

 

4

The Captain and First Officer typically share a common area on the Enterprise. Typically. But there’d been changes in sleeping arrangements. Spock insisting on needing a bed where the wall is on the left side, which meant for the first time Leonard and Jim had a place of their own that wasn’t Leonard’s dorm room.

He had to admit it was nice.

Expect for the rare occasions where he’d found Jim wit members of their crew in various states of undress.

He didn’t have any hard feelings about it. They had kissed once before, a year prior, but it’d been written off as a drunken mistaken and never talked about again. Which Leonard was more than fine with. Their friendship was more important than any feeling that might have lingered there between them.

His main issue stemmed from the fact that most of Jim’s liaisons with the crew, and the rare diplomatic visitor, happened to take place on their shared couch.

The couch that Jim was currently sprawled across after Leonard had not so politely refused to join him.

“You know,” Jim says, twirling his glass around, so that the pilfered wine from some planet Leonard’s already forgotten the name of nearly splashes over the rim. “This is my first birthday out here in the depths of space. Not my first birthday off of Earth, there was that whole incident with-” Jim stops, a silent understanding passing between them. Even he’s not drunk enough to feel comfortable talking about Tarsus IV. “-But it’s my first birthday here on a ship. That almost calls for a celebration.”

“Should I alert the crew,” Leonard asks sarcastically.

Not surprised when he gets a sharp look in return. “Don’t you dare.”

“Scout’s honor,” Leonard promises, with a mock toast.

“You were never a boy scout,” Jim accuses, before falling back on his previous line of conversation. There’d been a point he was trying to make, that much was clear the second he picked it up again. “You know, I never imagined spending this day out here. I keep waiting for something to go wrong. I always tried to stay grounded, just in case. The last time I was out in space on January Fourth, well-,” he stops, pauses and tips his head back against the couch cushions. When he speaks it's with a more somber tone. “Guess technically it’s my _second_ birthday out in space.”

Leonard’s not sure what compels him to get up. Heading to the bar, with the intention to refill his drink that turns into something else. He can feels Jim’s eyes on him as he goes. Pulling an extra glass out from the bar, and filling both his and the new one up.

It only takes a moment for Jim to follow him to the bar, his own glass still more than half full.

When they clank them together, a messy toast. Two glasses, hitting the one in the middle, a hollow sound filling the air around them, before he downs the wine like a shot.

 

 

5

“So here’s the question,” Jim says, pouring out the replicated gin into three glasses.

It’s not going to be any good, Leonard already knows that, but it’s the best they can manage under the circumstances. He’d promised to take Jim out for a proper drink once they were planetside again, but Jim had waved him off, insisting that replicated gin was fine.

“Am I actually twenty-seven, or did the whole ‘dying thing’-” He tries not to wince at Jim’s air quotes. “- reset that, and I’m now one again? I mean in your medical opinion-”

“In my medical opinion, you’re a pain in ass.”

 

 

6

He doesn’t realize what day it was until, it’s gone and passed.

The one day of the year that’s served as a struggle between them, put on the backburner, forgotten in exchange of the more pressing troubles of their five year mission. If this was what uncharted space was going to be like, Leonard almost didn’t mind it.

 _Almost_.

Maybe it was easier this way.

An infestation of tribbles more than enough to distract anyone from the state of melancholy.

Leonard could almost be thankful of the damn things - second time in his life a tribble had brought a smile to his face, and he’s at the point to consider that it might be a galaxy record.

He hopes he doesn’t have to make a habit of it.

Still, the next time they make a stop to restock, he drags Jim off to the first bar he can find, despite the fact that he’s over a month late. He insists upon paying, forcing something strong with an exotic color into Jim’s hand.

“You know, Bones, not that I’m one to complain about free liquor, but what’s the occasion?”

He doesn’t answer him straight away.

Just takes a drink of his own, awful blue, drink, and says, “Don’t push you luck, Jim, or the next round's on you.”

Jim laughs at that. Predictable in his own ways, ways Leonard finds comforting time and time again.

“Can’t argue with that one.”

“Drink up, doctor’s orders.”

“Doctor’s orders, huh,” Jim gives him a wink, flirty and casual. Before knocking back his drink like a pro, only grimacing once he’s set the glass down. “That why this shit tastes like cough medicine?”

“I thought it tasted familiar.”

As this earns him another one of Jim’s prized laughs, he considers the price of taking another swig more than worth it.

 

 

7

“The good ole twenty-nine,” Jim says. Already drunk by time Leonard gets off duty and finds him in their common area. “You know they say the best years of your life are your twenties. Bones, I’m at the end of my prime.”

“Oh don’t be such an infant.”

“That’s the thing, Bones, I’m not anymore - I’m getting old, any day now I’ll have gray hair. You’ll be pushing me in a wheelchair, or-” Jim stops, narrowing his eyes to scrutinize Leonard. “Well, wait - how old are you?”

“I don’t like where this is going,” he says.

“I mean you’re what,” Jim wiggles his fingers, doing some sort of half-drunk mental math, “Thirty-three, right?”

He’s thirty-four, and only for just another fourteen days, but he’s not telling Jim that.

Pointedly not answering, instead focusing on the three glasses filled with whiskey on the bar top. “Which one of these mine?”

Jim points out one quickly. If his eyes linger on the third glass between them a moment too long, Leonard knows better than to mention it.

“Tell me, what is it like being old enough to remember the First Contact?”

 

 

8

He throws the party because they need this, after everything they’ve been through the past few days.

It’s more than just Jim’s birthday, it’s the fact that they’re all still alive. That time and time again they beat the odds that would’ve once kept Leonard grounded. That he can look across a crowded room and see Jim standing there, laughing like less than forty-eight hours ago he wasn’t willing to let himself be sucked into the vacuum of space to save every other person on Yorktown.

When their glasses meet in a familiar toast, it’s an echo of what seems like a lifetime prior, but is mere days.

He can’t help but say, “Another year older,” in a tone that’s too damn near caring even for his own ears.

Jim meets him it’s with a smile that’s more hesitant than he ever has a right to look, “Thanks to you.” Soft and private. Words spoken just between the two of them, meant for no one else. Intimate enough that Leonard can almost forget the room around the celebrating.

Their private intimacy broken shortly after, as someone drops their glass, and distantly he registers Sulu calling out a teasing, “Party foul,” at whoever the unfortunate soul was.

When he turns back from the distraction to meet Jim’s eyes, the softness that has been there moments before is gone. Replaced by a more familiar look.

“Well, couldn’t let you have all the glory now could I.”

 

 

+1

There’s a knock on the door at what counts for midnight on the Yorktown, and Leonard knows who it is even as he groans and gets out of bed. The small ‘apartments’ Starfleet had offered them while the new Enterprise is being built don’t count for much, a glorified dorm room if anything, so it takes Leonard barely any time at all to get from his bed to the keypad that slides his door open.

He’d liked to say he was surprised to see Jim on the other side, but there’s no other person that wakes him up like this.

“I know the night cycles are computer generated on Yorktown, Jim, but-”

“It’s the twentieth,” Jim cuts him off, excited and far too awake for the middle of the night cycle. “Officially for five minutes and,” his eyes flicker to his watch, “thirty-eight seconds.”

“That’s all very fascinating Jim, but it’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s your birthday.”

And oh, it is.

His sleep muddled brain had taken a bit to catch on, but it hits him a moment later that Jim is right.

After everything that had happened, he’d somehow managed to forget that January was an eventful month for everyone. Normally the occasion would have been marked with drinks and a brief exchanging of gifts among the medical staff. Though with the Enterprise out of commission for what would many months yet, what remained of the crew had seemed to scatter through Yorktown, his birthday all but forgotten by everyone.

Including himself.

Or well, almost everyone apparently, because Jim was still here.

“You know, it’s a bit early to start drinking, or late depending on your point of view.”

“I wasn’t,” Jim starts, then stops. “I’m sober. I wanted to be sober for this.”

“For this,” Leonard prompts.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“A dangerous pastime.”

Jim grins at that, before adopting a more serious expression. “I don’t know where I’d be without you, Bones. There was a moment there - when we were stranded - and I thought the whole crew lost. It hurt, it still hurts, you know how much I care about my crew.”

“I know,” he agrees.

“Right well, the thing was, and I feel terrible about this, but the whole time. I thought, that even if the crew was gone. Even if we lost everyone else, as long as I found you, I could make it through everything. Because the thought of losing you - and we’ve come damn near close to it over the years - it was more than I could bear. More than I ever want to think about.”

“Jim-”

“The thing is, Bones, I’m in love with you.”

Somehow those words manage to tear him down and bring him back to life all at once. He wants to say something in reply, to explain the depths of the feelings that he only barely pretends to understand most of the time, but he can’t get his damn mouth to work.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve been since I first met you on that shuttle to the Academy. Of course, it takes nearly dying _again_ to realize it but I kept thinking about how any birthday could be our last, how I might not live you be thirty-one. The way I figure it, I’m already running on borrowed time. Maybe if I’m lucky I can spend those last few moments with you.”

This time when he kisses Jim, it’s not the drunk kiss with too much fire from the Academy.

It’s a softer touch, what they both desperately need. It’s taken eight years to get here, far longer than Leonard would’ve liked, but it’s worth it when he feels Jim melt beneath him. Familiar and unfamiliar all at once, as if he were destined from this.

With a kiss that feels like it’s welcoming him home.

When they pull apart, it’s only to catch their breaths, Jim’s lips still mere centimeters from his own, as he whispers, “Happy Birthday.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, according to various canon:  
> Jim's birthday is on Jan 4th.  
> Bones' is on Jan 20th.
> 
> And for a fun bonus, thanks to Beyond we now know Spock's is Jan 6th. 
> 
> So apparently, you have to be born in January to be on crew of the Enterprise??


End file.
